She shook her head, her hair as long as mine, even more lustrous. Even in the glare of the fluorescent lights she looked lovely. No wrinkles marred the corners of her eyes or bracketed her nose and mouth.
I might even look older than my mother.
She’d looked younger ever since Paul died. As I stared at her, a terrible thought occurred to me, one making me lean back, away from her.
“Paul's death wasn't an accident, was it? Was it a quid pro quo, Mother? Did you let them kill him in order to look younger?”
“You don’t understand,” she said, her voice as thin as a steel wire. “You never understood.”
“Tell me.” How much more could I take?
“Paul didn’t die because of anything they gave me. He died because of you.”
She abruptly stood, staring at me as if she hated me.
“What do you mean?”
“You shouldn’t have lived. Everyone would have been better off if you’d died.”
“Why? What am I?”
Dirugu came the far off voice of the Eagle Lady and I wondered if I was remembering what she said or if I was hearing her speak in real time.
I stood, the two of us now only three feet apart. We might as well have been separated by a continent. Or perhaps an entire world if the look on her face was anything to go by.
“What am I?”
“Ask your grandmother. She’s fought so damn hard to keep it a secret all your life. It’s time she told you.”
My mother turned and walked away.
I didn’t get a chance to tell her Nonnie had zapped me the last time I’d tried to talk to her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
A vampire doesn’t fall far from the tree
I started adding up everything since Nonnie zapped me and it all made sense. My mother’s validation had been almost anticlimactic.
Her comment about Paul was a shock, however.
But I had no desire to get zapped again. Somehow, I had to get my grandmother to tell me what she knew.
Before leaving the library I went to the reference desk and asked for help on information about the Dirugu. In ten minutes neither the librarian, who was as pleasant in personality as appearance, nor her assistant could find anything. She promised to do more digging for me so I left her my number. I sent one last look toward the Al-Anon meeting room, walked out of the building and into the parking lot to climb Mount Ford once more.
“Any luck?” Dan asked when I settled into the seat.
I shook my head, unwilling to go into my family dynamics. My family was a train wreck, something I’d known when I was eight years old. Things hadn’t gotten better in the last twenty-five years.
“Where to?”
I didn’t know. I was stuck in a strange limbo. “Home, I guess.”
“About that.”
I turned, studied his profile, waiting.
“You’re not safe there,” he said. “I’m not the only one following you,” he added.
He looked at me, a study of shadows. The library was well-lit, the parking lot designed to alleviate the fears of the citizens of this northeast section of San Antonio. The bright halogen light didn’t promise safety and I knew that only too well. Look what happened at The Smiling Senorita.
“What do you suggest?” I asked.
I’d been rejected by my last relative. I was feeling lonely and abandoned, just like my dream and my townhouse was spooking me.
“I’ve got a house,” he said.
“You’ve got a house.”
He nodded, faced forward, staring out the windshield with his hands clasped tight on the steering wheel.
“It’s in Welfare,” he said. “My family’s place outside San Antonio.”
“What would Il Duce say?”
“He won’t know because I’m not going to tell him. Unless you do.” He gave me a swift glance.
I shook my head.
“I have no reason to trust you,” I said. “I don’t know you. Why do you care?”
“Because you don’t know who he is,” he said. “Because even if you’re one of them, I’d be willing to bet my baby cousin - and she’s three - knows more about vampires than you do.”
That stung, but it was the truth.
“So who is he? No, who are you?”
He reached down and started the truck, pulling out of the parking lot before he began to talk.
“I was born at Baptist Hospital, lived all my life in San Antonio. I went to Northeast ISD, Madison High School. I’m an only child. My mom is a pill but I love her. My father is dating a woman younger than me right now.”
He glanced over at me and I wondered if he had originally wanted to say something else, like her bra size was bigger than her IQ. But that would have been trite and Dan didn’t strike me as the trite type.
“I’ve got a degree in mechanical engineering and I’m a former Ranger, thanks to Uncle Sam. I was stationed in Iraq, then Afghanistan.”
“Yet you’re working as a bodyguard for a vampire.”
He clenched both hands tighter on the wheel.
“Why did you take a job with Maddock?”
“Maybe I didn’t have any built-in prejudice against vampires. Until I met Maddock.”
My stomach rolled. I wondered if it was hunger. We were going back to my apartment; I recognized the fast food restaurants along the way.
“What are you going to do for the rest of the night?” he asked.
Do research on a Dirugu. Call my grandmother. For that matter, I may go by my grandmother’s house again.
I shrugged. I didn’t feel all comfy telling Dan everything. He might be a great guy but I wasn’t in the market for a great guy right now. I wanted to figure out what was happening to me. Maybe afterward, I would be interested.
“Thanks for the invitation,” I said, when he pulled into my parking lot. “I appreciate it.”
“I wish you’d take advantage of it. No strings attached.”
I glanced at him.
He switched on the interior light so I could see him.
“I’m serious, Marcie. You’d be an honored guest. I want you safe.”
I glanced at my front door, wondering if I was going to have another case of the heebie jeebies tonight. It didn’t matter what I felt. I had to handle it myself. I was a grownup. I wasn’t a wuss. If I wasn’t a badass, at least I had to be brave enough to face the shadows.
“What’s your last name?” I asked, grabbing my purse.
“Travis,” he said.
I nodded, glad one mystery solved. “Thank you,” I said, grabbing my purse and leaving him. I knew he’d sit out there and watch. That was okay. It was cheating a little on the grownup scale, but it made me feel better anyway.
I unlocked my front door, flipped on the light and stood there, listening.
Nothing moved. No shadows melted into another shadow. My house was empty and lonely.
I almost turned around and walked back to Dan’s truck, changing my mind. Almost.
Instead, I opened my phone and dialed my grandmother, sending my thoughts to her. Please answer. Please answer. Please answer.
You didn’t command a woman as powerful as I suspected my grandmother was. You begged. Okay, I’d beg. But I suspected my grandmother knew the answer to the one question that meant the most to me.
What was I?
I let the phone ring twenty times before I hung up.
In the interim, I made something to eat, decided I needed to go to the grocery store again and wondered if I should offer Dan some of my dinner. Tonight it was nothing much: two veggie burgers and a salad. Still, it was something and he’d wolfed down my raisin bread toast.
My phone rang while I was still deciding. I glanced at the screen, my stomach clenching as I answered.
“Hi, Nonnie,” I said.
“An hour, near the mint,” she said. Ever since I’d gone vampire, she’d lost the warmth in her tone when she spoke to me, but now her voice sounded like crus
hed glass.
I agreed, pocketed my phone and stared at my plate.
Great, I was about to visit the woman who had tried to kill me, a woman I still loved with all my heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Turn left at the glowing stones
I thought about telling Dan where I was going. It might be safer to have someone following me, but I opted to sneak out the kitchen door, grateful Mr. Gunderson had parked so badly last night I couldn't get into my own spot. Guest parking had been full so I had to find a place on the other side of the complex.
Halfway to Nonnie's house I realized I'd been successful. Dan wasn't following me.
My grandmother said “the mint” and I knew exactly where she wanted to meet. Nonnie’s pride and joy was her garden. She’d converted the half acre of the backyard into a series of paths and raised beds. She had enough herbs pto give to all her neighbors and friends, women I now knew were her coven.
My granny, head witch.
I wish it was a full moon, but we were two weeks away from it, leaving me in darkness. I crept around the side of Nonnie’s house, arms outstretched. My left hand brushed against the boxwoods surrounding the house, using them as a guide to reach the gate for the privacy fence.
Another thing I’d never considered. My grandmother had a ten foot fence rather than the standard height of six feet. Why?
The gate was never padlocked and I lifted the handle now, grateful the hinges didn’t squeak. I was sure my grandmother knew I was here, but I didn’t want anyone else to know.
My sneakers hit the pebble path and I hesitated. If given a choice, I’d rather walk in daylight than see in the dark but a little night vision would help.
I followed the path, heading for the back of the garden where it formed an arrow’s point. There, Nonnie had planted strips of mint she used in all her cooking, especially her iced tea.
The plants were stubby, some of them done for the season. Others were coming into their harvest time. Boxwoods bordered the main paths and kept me grounded, my fingers brushing over their four foot high perfectly manicured tops.
Once, when I couldn’t reach my grandmother, I’d taken off work to make sure she was all right. I’d found her in her garden, carefully clipping the boxwoods with a pair of scissors.
“The garden shears make them shaggy,” she’d said. “They don’t like the look.”
I’d smiled at her turn of phrase at the time. Now I couldn’t help but wonder if my grandmother talked to plants. Did they talk back? In a world filled with vampires, werewolves and heaven knew what else, what was a little inter-species communication?
My eyes were adjusting to the darkness well enough I could see shapes on shapes. The boxwoods looked like a long train winding along the paths. Rose bushes hugged the east fence while the intricate plantings of the herb garden were directly ahead.
I stopped and inhaled, smelling the last of the summer roses beneath the scent of the oregano and peppers and mint.
I didn’t see her as much as feel her, her presence a warm shadow ahead and to the left of me.
The child I’d been, needy and lonely, wanted to run to her, embrace her, allow her an explanation for the other night. The woman I’d become, probably as needy and definitely as lonely, but tempered by experience, hesitated on the path, cautious.
“Am I going to get zapped?” I asked.
One of her arms reached out and I almost flinched, imagining a wand in her hand.
“Once you step over the rocks,” she said, pointing toward me, “you’ll be safe.”
In front of her, curving in the shape of the new moon was a line of glowing rocks, their white shape taking on more brilliance the closer I came. When I put one foot over the line, they faded a little. When both feet were over the stones they became as dark and shrouded as the rest of the garden.
“What was that?”
“A circle of protection,” she said, sounding old and tired.
Nonnie never sounded old and tired.
She turned and made her way to a bench set in the very back of the garden.
I followed her, wanting to know everything at once, yet afraid to ask. My inner wuss wanted me to shut up and listen. The braver part wanted to control the conversation.
She sat on one end of the bench, invitation to join her.
“So, we’re in a circle of protection now?”
“No,” she said, leaning back against the bench. “We are out of it. The circle is for my house. Put there by friends of mine.”
I sat beside her.
“To protect you from me?” I asked. “Is that why I got zapped?”
I leaned forward, clasping my hands together and wishing I had my purse instead of leaving it in my car. I would have wrapped my arms around it for comfort, much as I had with my stuffed teddy.
“Who are your friends, Nonnie? Your coven?”
“My friends,” she said, turning your head. “What would you know of covens, Margie?”
“Are you a witch, Nonnie?”
“Why would you be asking that?”
“No,” I said. “We’re not playing ask the question to avoid answering the question. Are you a witch?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Have you always been a witch? Is my mother a witch?”
“Yes,” she said. “And no.”
“Why not?” I asked, deciding to handle the second answer first. “Isn’t it in the blood? Sort of a hereditary vocation?”
“In your mother’s case, she had no talent in the art.”
The word surprised me. She considered witchcraft an art form?
“But she had enough witch blood in her to bring about disaster.”
I wondered if she meant me. I’d never been considered a disaster before.
“Your mother likes vampires. Where she got it from, I don’t know.”
Her shadow moved, settling on the bench.
“Evidently, you do, too. In your case, it’s natural. Like calling to like.”
Was she going to lambast me about Doug now? I’d heard it before. Her lectures hadn’t stopped me from dating him. I’d been foolish, yes, I would agree.
My thoughts stopped. “What do you mean, like calling to like?”
“Your father,” she said.
“What’s wrong with my father?” Other than being an absent parent, one of those dads who, once divorced, also forgot he’d sired a child. Oh, her? Yeah, my ex-wife’s kid.
“David isn’t your father,” she said, the words floating on a mint tinged breeze.
“What do you mean?”
She’d tricked me into using her technique of endlessly asking questions.
“David isn’t your father," she repeated,
My stomach had dropped to the vicinity of my ankles. My fingertips were cold and it had nothing to do with the breeze, now gusting through the garden like a child escaping a call to nap.
The back of my tongue tasted funny, almost greenish. The sick taste had me swallowing repeatedly. Better to concentrate on that then the words Nonnie had just spoken.
“Are you my grandmother?” I asked a few minutes later.
“Yes.”
“And Demi is my mother.”
“Yes.”
“But my father isn’t my father.”
“No.”
“Does he know that?”
“Yes.”
Well, it would certainly explain the lack of paternal affection.
“Who is my father?”
Would she answer in more than one word? When the answer came, I think I expected it. I think, some far off part of me had already put it together.
“A vampire,” she said.
“Vampires can’t have children,” I said. I’d known that before waking up in the VRC but Orientation had verified it.
“They are not supposed to be able to have children,” my grandmother said. “But, then, they are not supposed to mate with those of witch blood, either. Demi seems to be an exception.”
“Who is he?” I asked, not wanting to ask but unable to restrain the question. Did I really want to know? No, but it was a little too late for avoiding the truth. “Who’s my father?”
“He’s no longer walking the earth.”
A strange way to put it.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Nonnie said. “I don’t care.”
I wanted to ask a dozen questions but I didn’t. I’d come face to face with Nonnie’s implacable will numerous times in my life. When she got that tone in her voice you might as well quit asking.
“Did he ever know about me?”
“No.”
I turned my head in her direction. “Why not?”
“Because you weren’t supposed to have been conceived, let alone born.”
I felt a little like Alice in Wonderland at the moment: “…at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”
“You didn’t think I was going to survive,” I said, amazed when my voice didn’t quaver.
“No.”
There was something in her voice.
“You thought I would be different, didn’t you? How?” I thought about it for a moment, then realized what it was. “You thought I’d be a natural born vampire?”
The moments stretched gravlax thin.
Did you even want me? Did you love me? Was it all a lie? Was my whole life a lie?
I wanted to be able to take in everything she was saying, but part of me, the little girl with the wide eyes, wanted to scream and shout, maybe even have a heels beating on the floor tantrum.
No, I wanted to cry.
“Were you going to let me live if I was?” I asked, my voice still low and surprisingly calm.
“I watched you from birth, to ensure you were normal.”
Not exactly normal. How much did my grandmother know of my new vampire status? Dirugu? Pranic? Hell, what was I?
“But if I hadn’t been?”
“Then my sisters of the faith and I would have discussed what to do.”
Sisters of the faith. I took that to mean her coven.
“Why didn’t I know any of this?” Jeesh, where had I been all my life?
The Fertile Vampire Page 15
